Friendly Forecast

Junior High. It may do me in twice. Three times if you count when I read Wonder.

Isn’t it enough that I survived my growth spurt of home perms, lunch room politics, and locker combinations? I wore my armor of college-ruled loose leaf. I saw the bad words on the bathroom walls and heard worse ones walking down the halls. I even sold myself a case of fundraiser candy bars in hopes that I would “Dash for Cash.” I served my sentence. Still I hear a whomp-whomp-whomp and it’s getting louder. The unstable boomerang of puberty is coming back to hit me; this time as the mother of an 8th grader.

Maybe I’ll check her out daily for lunch. We can eat sandwiches cut in triangles while I hide her fragile self-esteem in my car. Maybe I can stuff her backpack-not-a-messenger-bag full of enough love notes to insulate her from the chilly hours. Maybe she’ll surprise me with her gumption while I’m drafting battle plans to storm the quad and topple the totem pole of popularity.

I forgot how everything matters. These days the cool kids wear Nike Elite socks with Hawaiian sandals (gag me) and our local Hallmark has 200 pair on backorder (the reason she isn't wearing them). I tell her tales of Umbros, Swatches, Guess? jeans and extinct Esprit bags proving trends are just that. I keep handing her the drumsticks to her own drum. MARCH GIRL MARCH

High school was an equally intense social rite of passage I barely squeaked though. I turned in my emerald cap and gown, pointed west to Utah and told myself I’d never look back.

I blossomed in the shadow of Y mountain. Equal parts independence and desert air proved to be the perfect recipe for growing a backbone. Once I formed inner strength I panned for gold and found glimmers and nuggets within. Decades passed. Life’s most extreme weather could not oxidize pure gold. My sound eternal structure remains uncrushable. If standing this tall is effortless why did I crumple so easily back then?

Age and air and infinite equations must have changed us all because I had a baby the week of my 20-year reunion and was somehow surrounded by all those people I intended on forgetting.

I wore Kimmy’s maternity clothes the last trimester and keep the ‘YOU’VE GOT THIS’ note she scribbled in my nursery. Baby Boy wore Mia’s son’s blue elephant gown home from the hospital and recently wore the frog outfit that Linzi gave Mia gave Me. (That’s called a Rock Bridge Triple Tadpole.) I lay him on his lambskin rug that Jeanne sent and file his nails with John’s electric file. Long before he was born there was Adam’s empathy about miscarriage, Haru’s prayers, and snail mail from Holly and Zarsamora Langendoerfer (best name ever). How can I forget Sophie’s pearl sugar and brioche, an afternoon on the Santa Barbara beach with Shelly, Kirk’s email to lift me up after Max died, and Amy’s medical tips for improving our chances at pregnancy. Melissa has been my Missouri cheerleader passing messages to my mom at church and Josh continues to visit my dad and discuss all things military when he’s in town. I wrote now-I’m-a-grown-up-and-I-appreciate-you-even-more letters to Bancroft and Pickett to thank them for teaching me more than John Donne and osmosis. They wrote me back. Heck, my former classmate is the new principal of our high school. If that’s not full circle nothing is.

Time is indeed the great equalizer. It dulls the painfully sharp corners of adolescent labels and dumps us smooth side up into a melting pot of commonality. Now we all worry about health, wealth, and family. Now we wish we had been better in our youth. We wish we had been braver and nicer, too.

Grant Fairley said, “One of the greatest titles we can have is OLD FRIEND. We never appreciate how important old friends are until we are older. The problem is we need to start our old friendships when we are young. Today is the day to invest in those people we hope will call us OLD FRIEND in the years to come.”

I’m happy to have realized the frustrating fields of high school yielded a fairly colorful bouquet of old friends. I am thankful for my old friends. I’m also thankful I don’t use a graphing calculator in real life. I’m sad Rallyburger fries are not part of real life lunches anymore.

I’m doing my best for RE. After lots of [perhaps unwanted] advice and snuggling and prayers I gave this Shel Silverstein poem to her:

Listen to the musnt’s, child. Listen to the don’ts.

Listen to the shouldn’ts, the impossibles, the won’ts.

Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me…

Anything can happen, child. Anything can be.

Leave the future's forecast open, 8th grader. You'll pass five more grades and land on your feet amidst good company. Time will surprise you.

*photo of a quilt I saw at a quilt show in downtown SLC a few years ago. The woman that made it had a son staying at Primary Children's Hospital so she started this quilt to keep her sanity and help the time pass. The word got out that she needed labels and nurses, families of patients, and strangers started bringing them to her. The whole quilt was HUGE. Literally thousands of unique labels. Hard to find these days now that the labels are silkscreened inside!